Just as Google Calendar is the default calendar on most Android devices, Apple Calendar is built into OS X and iOS. That means you can keep your calendar up-to-date across all your Apple devices and on the web through iCloud (if you set up Apple Calendar to sync through iCould, that is). In the age of the iPhone, the art of managing a calendar is so efficient that we barely have to spend any time thinking about it. Like a high-priced personal assistant, our calendars work even when we’re not staying on top of them, dutifully pulling dates from emails and messages, and making sure we never forget a friend’s birthday. The smart, sophisticated iOS interface has turned calendar-keeping from an active, urgent responsibility into a passive one, and pretty much everyone who owns an iPhone now partakes in some form of day planning. The best iOS calendars in the field don’t just look great, they offer their own unique concepts, distinguishing themselves by how they handle and present our data. Whether it’s event input, intelligence, social integration, or notifications, calendar app makers have added a wealth of features and functionality to the stock iOS calendar, to the point where Apple has even begun to borrow popular features just to keep up. Nowhere is this more evident than in the impending shutdown of Sunrise (which was scheduled to fold on Aug. When it launched back in 2012, it offered a refreshing spin on the classic calendar. With a variety of app integrations, it combined events from places like Facebook, Eventbrite, LinkedIn, and Foursquare to create a complete picture of your work and play commitments. Smart, slick, and stylish, its color-coded events and minimal monthly view set a new standard for digital day planning, showcasing the enormous potential of multitouch and the untapped power of iOS. A steady stream of updates made it one of the best and most popular calendars in the App Store until Microsoft bought it in 2015 and subsequently announced that Sunrise would shutter this week. The company delayed the move to bring more features to Microsoft's Outlook email app. But while bits of Sunrise can be found in Outlook, its influence can be felt on calendars all over the App Store. Its sleek design and unique concept paved the way for generations of digital day planners, and dejected devotees won’t have to look far to find a worthy replacement. Here’s our list of favorites. Winner: Fantastical Fantastical’s slick design gives you a tidy overview of your schedule, whether in day, week or month view. There are calendar apps, and then there is ($5 for, $10 for ). What started as a Mac utility for die-hard date keepers has turned into the measuring stick for all other mobile calendar apps. From its perfectly-calibrated views to its downright pleasurable input screen, Fantastical doesn’t just live up to its lofty name—you’d be hard-pressed to find a flattering adjective that doesn’t apply. Fantastical’s main screen has a definite Sunrise-style feel, with a chronological list of appointments displayed below a full or partial calendar month. Instead of a choose-your-own-account method, Fantastical piggybacks on Calendar, displaying only the accounts you’ve subscribed to in Settings. Serious Eventbrite and Facebook users won’t miss the in-app integration, however, as they likely have those events already plugged into their Google or iCloud calendars. Its interface is simple enough to grasp in seconds, but that’s not to imply that Fantastical is merely a basic calendar. There are three views to choose from: The patented DayTicker, which boils your calendar down to only days that have events, a full dot-style monthly calendar, and a week view that offers an hourly overview of your upcoming schedule. The DayTicker puts your events on full display, so you can check in and quickly get on with your day. But while Fantastical can certainly function as a regular calendar, it’s not as much about days as it is about events. Where other calendars will show blank slots between appointments, Fantastical’s event list focuses solely on what you need to do. In fact, the only place you’ll see free time is in the weekly view, and that’s mainly for fixing scheduling snafus. It’s not unlike a to-do app in that regard, and it’s one of the many subtle ways that Fantastical sets itself apart from its competitors. Event creation is an overlooked aspect of many calendar apps, but Flexibits spent considerable time on it. Foremost is its natural language engine. It might not be as novel as it once was (especially since more than a few of its peers have adopted the concept on their own way), but it’s still delightful to watch it parse a jumbled string of words into a sensible event. Fantastical requires separate purchases for the iPhone and iPad, but the money is well spent. Whether you have a mini or a Pro, Fantastical makes the most of the extra pixels, adding support for Split View and Slide Over, as well as an expanded design that puts a greater emphasis on the calendar. And if you own an Apple Watch, you can get reminders and add events right from your wrist.
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March 2019
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